by Lisa Preston
Thea wiggled her eyebrows and made a face. They’d had many talks on how impossible mothers were. The gabfests had started in college and never stopped.
And when things had changed for Daphne and her mom, Daphne never made herself fix what was broken, she’d just moved in with Thea.
Vic turned and stepped into the kitchen. Daphne heard the clink of Grazie’s leash from the refrigerator hook. A year ago, Grazie would have heard it, too, but her ears perked when Vic waved the leash at her, then his son.
“Jed, take Grazie for a walk.” Vic held the leash out to his son.
“Why?” The boy’s tone was a clear refusal.
Vic hooked the leash onto Grazie’s collar. The dog’s tail wagged; then she slumped to a lazy sit. He patted his leg, opened the door, and called her as he beckoned to Jed. “Thanks, buddy. We’ll talk in a bit.”
Jed rolled his eyes. So did Thea.
Daphne watched Vic avoid eye contact with everybody but his son. The boy didn’t understand, but he didn’t protest more. Thea didn’t understand either, Daphne knew. And there was so much she didn’t understand herself.
Vic still held the door open after his son and dog passed through, then moved down the walk and to the street. He gave Thea a stiff smile.
“Oh,” she said. “I guess I’ll be going.”
He nodded. “It was good to see you again.”
Daphne gave him a sharp look, grabbed her checkbook, and followed Thea outside. Using the hood of the car to write Thea a check, she saw a fat folder between the seats which had been covered with the bag of snacks. Papers splayed from the folder, printouts of newspaper stories. The headlines were familiar, but old.
Local Girl Missing. Body Found in Snohomish Woods. Body Identified as Missing Woman.
The headlines were twenty years old. When Thea plunked her purse and shopping bag on the car’s roof, Daphne pulled the door open. “What are you doing with those articles?”
She looked where Daphne stared. “I was reading, that’s all. I was thinking of you. I … wondered. I hadn’t thought about Suzanne in a long time and …”
“And?” Daphne felt her teeth clench.
Thea’s voice went to a whisper as she brought two fingers to touch Daphne’s face. “And I’m a little worried about you, friend. So I was kind of trying to get inside your head. Maybe I could worry with you.”
Something cracked inside Daphne and she shook her head, then palmed the fingers on her face. “Thanks then. Thanks for everything today, Thea.”
Her best friend grinned and let her hand drop down to Daphne’s hard shoulder. “Did you carry a billion pounds of roofing crap around again today?”
Daphne shook her head. “We usually load roofs with a lift or conveyor nowadays, especially on big projects.”
“But haven’t you ever thought all that physical work will make you grow a mustache?”
Daphne leveled a look at Thea. “No. I haven’t. But thanks, I’ll get started on that right away. Worrying about a mustache. Useful.”
“I’m having a drink with Henry at eight.” Thea winked and checked her watch.
“Who?” The last guy Thea mentioned dating had a long multisyllabic name and the massive build of a Pacific Islander.
“Henry. Henry Fragher. He’s a hotshot in the police union.”
“Oh.” Recollection flooded Daphne. “The guy you said you’d see—”
“Smoke,” Thea corrected.
“Yes. That. I don’t want you to—”
Thea smacked Daphne’s shoulder. “Would you relax? I’m messing with you.”
Daphne felt hope fade. “You’re not seeing him? You won’t be able to get me …” She glanced about for Vic, spied him at the open doorway watching them with his arms folded across his chest. “… An address or some kind of contact info for the retired detective?”
“Oh, no. I mean, yes, I’m seeing Henry. No, I won’t blow him, and yes, I bet I can get a phone or addy for your guy.”
“Mm, how?” Daphne imagined Thea going to jail for some wild indiscretion, too.
“Fact is, I’m going to look in his phone when he goes to get us drinks.”
“She doesn’t want to go,” Jed said, padding up the walkway with Grazie.
Daphne opened her mouth, watching Thea back into the street, catching sight of a smudge in the asphalt between the Mercedes’ tires. Then she blinked at the panting dog who wanted to go back inside and at the boy holding the leash who wanted the same.
“Thanks for trying,” Vic called. As Jed and Grazie cleared the doorway, Daphne heard Vic project inside, “Be inside in a minute, buddy.” And then the door shut and he was beside her, a hand on the small of her back.
“Where’s my car?”
“It got impounded after the accident.”
“You weren’t hurt?”
She shook her head and noticed the headache it caused. She rolled her shoulders in exaggerated shrugs, testing. Movement hurt. “The side window shattered,” she said, remembering the crumbled remains. “Maybe it rang my bell a little.”
“You got in an accident and the result of the accident was … you were charged with reckless driving?”
She nodded, wordless.
“It would probably be a good thing if Cassandra didn’t know about you getting arrested, if we can manage that.”
“You think I want her to know? You think I want anyone to know? Jesus, Vic.”
His jaw clenched in response, but he said nothing more. Daphne thought of how she’d playfully chastised him when they met and he’d semi-sworn, said Jesus when he spilled a glass in a restaurant on one of their first dates. She’d told him how she’d been instructed as a child not to speak that way. He’d never sworn Jesus again, but a few times when she’d let fly with choice words, he’d pointed out how she dabbled in profanity when stressed.
She gestured to the empty space where his car should have been parked. “I’m inconvenienced, too. My tool belt and my coil nailer were in your car. Vic, I needed you this afternoon and you weren’t there for me.”
He spread his hands in defense. “What was I supposed to do? I called your cell this afternoon when I got to Jed’s game. I thought of you at Josie’s game and I called you, just because I was thinking of you. Then I got your voice mail. And you, you sounded insane, telling me to bring cash and identification and that you’d been in an accident and you were raving, but you didn’t say where you were. I called your cell again and again, I called the house, I even called your work and—”
“You called my work?”
“Yes. They just told me you’d worked a half day and left at noon. It’s what I’d expected you to do. I did not expect you to get arrested. If you’d been unable to reach me this afternoon, would your next guess have been to show up at the police station to bail me out?”
“I wasn’t in a police station, I was in a jail. In a holding cell. But fine. No, I wouldn’t have looked for you in jail. Not you.”
“Not you either,” he said, his voice soft and smile wry. “This was unusual—”
“A guy grabbed me today. I was trying to help, to make an effort for a little old lady and one thing led to another. I’m not perfect. Neither are you.” She pointed to a smudged, bare clump of feathers ground into the street. “See that?”
“Who grabbed you exactly? What are you talking about?” Vic said, not looking where she pointed.
“It was a robin. You killed it Wednesday. You ran over it. Twice. Just yesterday.” She headed for the door, ignoring him following her.
Inside, Vic pushed a button on the blinking answering machine. Its mechanical voice said, “Message one.” Frances Mayfield had implored her daughter to call, to come visit. Daphne deleted the message.
“Message two.” Then a woman’s voice said, “Mr. Daily, this is Seattle Police Dispatch. I’m relaying a question for one of our officers at a scene regarding your vehicle. Are you there?”
After a pause, the line went dead and the message
stopped. The machine clicked and said “Message three,” in its stilted, careful English.
At the sound of his own voice asking Daphne to pick up if she was there, Vic hit delete.
“Message four.” The machine’s repetitive, electronic syllables made Daphne want to scream.
Then there was a man talking, his voice low and snarling. “You get it now? Something from ten years ago can come back and bite you in the ass.”
CHAPTER 12
Daphne recoiled from the telephone, then rallied and punched the button to replay the last message.
Vic rubbed his scalp. In the living room, Jed turned the television up as the answering machine again voiced the electronic comment, “Message four.” And then a man’s snarl repeated. “You get it now? Something from ten years ago can come back and bite you in the ass.”
“Who is that?” Vic asked.
She shook her head.
“You don’t know?” His hands made fists on his hips.
She frowned and hit the message again, thinking of Guff rushing her at Minerva Watts’s doorway. His words, his tone filtered back.
You. Stand there. Hold up.
One hand went to her right shoulder, remembering his grip on her jacket though she stood coatless in the kitchen now. Daphne hit the machine and played the message again. Low, the voice snarled its vague threatening words. A bit of menace. It sounded like someone disguising his voice, but it didn’t sound like the man she’d seen carrying a box, Guff. No. Guff, the man who grabbed her and chased her, hadn’t called the house and left this message.
Daphne shook her head. “Something from ten years ago? That doesn’t make sense.” Her father’s suicide, a decade past, reamed her mind with new confusion. Nothing made sense.
“Then what would that guy be talking about, Daph?”
“I don’t know. But do you believe me now? This guy Guff grabbed me. That woman called Minerva Watts lady at first but then called her Mother. Said it was time for her pill. Minerva asked her not to take—”
“Daphne!”
“What?”
“What does that have to do with something … ,” he pointed at the phone, “from ten years ago biting you in the ass?”
“I don’t know! How should I know? Maybe it’s a message for you, not me. What did you do ten years ago? I didn’t even know you then.”
He shook his head. “Ten years ago, I had two little ones and a bad marriage and I’d just gotten my job at the Weather Service.”
“So in ten more years you can retire and you’re all set.” As soon as she snapped off her retort, she regretted it.
He put a hand on her shoulder. “And you. Ten years ago, you lost your father.”
“I didn’t lose him. I know where he is. Just outside the church grounds. Just … not with his daughter.”
“Daphne, what is going on?”
“You know what? The first thing you said to me was that I missed Josie’s game. And you already knew I was in an accident. You should have asked first if I was okay.”
“I could see that you were okay. Come on. We don’t want to fight.”
“Oh, I think I do.”
He looked away, working his jaw muscles.
She folded her arms across her chest. “And that guy took my jacket, so he has my wallet. I have to get my mother … I don’t know. Out of the house. She’s playing bridge right now. But I have to go over there.”
He grabbed her hand, then turned his wrist to check his watch. “But I need your truck so I can take Jed back to his mother’s. We’re late. I called Cassandra before we came home and asked for an extra hour, because I wanted to run home to check on you. I wanted to see if you were here. You weren’t answering your phone.”
“That guy got it when he took my jacket.” Daphne replayed the quick conflict in her mind again, then remembered the wreck, the jail. The unfairness of it all brought tears to her eyes, but their appearance was infuriating. She wiped her face.
“But from the way you describe it, he was just sort of holding on to your jacket and you slipped out of it.”
“And then he chased me, Vic. You know, I think Minerva Watts’s grandmother’s brooch was in that box Guff was carrying. He put it in the car.”
“Do you hear yourself? Where in the world did that come from?”
“The box that guy Guff was carrying.” Daphne snapped out of her numbness, “Look, whose side are you on?”
“Yours.” He looked behind her and smiled. “I’m on your side.”
Daphne turned. Seeing Jed behind her, she wondered how long he’d been there, how much he’d overheard.
“What’s going on?” the boy asked.
“Oh, we just got an odd message on the machine, buddy. That’s all,” Vic said with a shrug. “You haven’t used the phone, have you, bud?”
Jed shook his head. Vic nodded and said, “Go get in the truck and I’ll run you back to your mom’s house.”
After the boy stepped outside, Vic turned to Daphne and snapped his fingers. “Have you been on the phone since you came home?”
She nodded. “When I was upstairs, I tried to call my mother to warn her.”
“About this weird phone message?”
“No, about a guy having my wallet. Her address is on my ID.”
“Okay, but we haven’t received any calls, right? Nothing incoming? You haven’t answered the phone?”
She shook her head, excited as she understood what he was thinking. They could uncover who left the message. There was a way.
Vic nodded. “Then we’ll just dial star sixty-nine on the phone and get the phone number of the last incoming call. I don’t think outgoing calls affect the ability to get the number of the last caller. And the last incoming call is from the man who left that message.” He pointed to the answering machine.
She snatched the phone from him and he spread his fingers in a gesture of submission. Then she dialed three numbers and asked for a police officer, explaining that someone had her wallet and had grabbed her and chased her and now she had come home to a threatening phone call. And then she rolled her eyes at the dispatcher’s vague answer of how long it might be before a police officer would come to her house and hear her complaint.
“What are you doing?” Vic asked when she hung up the phone.
“I get one chance to dial star sixty-nine and see who the last caller is, right? I want a police officer to witness it. I mean, suppose we get a phone call right now? Suppose Thea calls or anybody else. It’ll show her as the last caller and we’ll lose getting to know who phoned in this threat.”
“You think it’s a threat?”
“It’s pretty weird, isn’t it? So, I’m going to get a police officer here and he can hear with us who left that last message. And maybe he’ll do something about it. I’ll be a complainant,” she told Vic, gesturing toward the telephone. Her head pounded. Nothing made sense, but she needed to articulate things. She would begin at the beginning with the next police officer and leave nothing out. He would see it. He would understand. He would find what was missing. Maybe it would be a female officer. Yes, that would be better. Daphne nodded. “It’s just like yesterday when I called the police, I mean when you called, about those people taking Minerva Watts. I mean when they took her again today, it was like that.”
“Her daily kidnapping?” Vic flipped one hand in a doubtful wave.
“What?”
“Well, it doesn’t make sense.” He cupped her face with both hands. “Yesterday you see this couple with this older woman in the park and they go to a car. She says she’s being robbed and kidnapped. Today you see the same thing. And you still believe there’s really something wrong even though—”
“You weren’t there. If you’d been there, you’d know.”
“I’d know what?”
“That there is something wrong. Something’s going on. She said it was her grandmother’s brooch—”
He waved her off, his face perplexed. “What brooch?”
“Exactly. You didn’t see it. She wasn’t making sense. She’s a failing little old lady. She’s Grazie without the fur.” He stopped himself and rolled his lips in, then closed his eyes before continuing. “All I’m saying is, I want you to think about what you saw, what you’ve told us.”
“Us?”
“Me. The police. Thea.”
She nodded, her jaw set. “Because all of you understand there’s nothing wrong and Minerva Watts is perfectly safe and I’m the one who’s wrong here?”
“Daph, please. People do not get kidnapped one day and then again the next. By the same people? At about the same place? That is not kidnapping. That is a couple trying to handle an old lady in their lives.”
“Then why’d he chase me?”
He spread his hands wide. “Why did you run from him? Isn’t that why he chased you? Wouldn’t you do the same, instinctively? If someone is at our front door”—he pointed to it—“and that person suddenly runs …” He gave a dismissive one-handed wave for explanation.
“No. No, Vic. And you know what? I am not feeling very safe with you, not with your attitude toward what happened to me today.”
The front door opened and Jed stepped inside, accidentally bumping Grazie, who rested against the door like weather stripping. She struggled to her feet then collapsed, panting in pain.
“I think,” Vic said, leaning over to calm the dog as Daphne knelt. “I think I have to put her down.”
“No!” Daphne gritted her teeth, regretting her screech.
Jed patted the dog’s head, then pushed his hands deep in his front pockets. “Don’t put her down. Just don’t. But Dad, are you coming? Mom’s going to be mad if I’m even later getting back.” He twisted his lower lip and looked at the dog. “Is she okay?”
A knock at the door made them all scramble, including Grazie.
“Who’s here?” the boy asked, not calling through the door but looking at Vic and Daphne for an answer.
“I would seriously love to have just one thing going on instead of ten,” Daphne said, sliding Grazie away from the door and rising to twist the knob. “Hello,” she said, waving the short uniformed man with a red crew cut into the house. “You got here fast.”
